“Better Call Saul,” the highly anticipated “Breaking Bad” prequel from Vince Gilligan, was delayed from a November start to early 2015 due to Gilligan’s writing pace. “I’m very slow for television,” Gilligan said. As he discussed his writing process, it became clear there are good reasons for his slow pace.

“The tradition of having something sweated over, worked out as best we can, with tremendous attention to detail and some showmanship” will continue on “Better Call Saul,” said writer-producer Peter Gould.

The logistical realities of television can impact the storytelling, Gould noted.

or instance, “in Season 2 we had to kill Tuco in episode 2 due to actors’ schedules…” Gilligan said. “We thought a lot ab out this character Saul Goodman, it was a leap of faith for me…Saul moved the universe two degrees to the left. I was so worried we were going to break open the “BB” universe and he would be this puzzle piece that didn’t fit…Lo and behold this crazy, slippery lawyer in the crazy suits in this crazy office, he made the drama more dramatic, the comedy more comedic.” Bob Odenkirk’s Saul was the right counter-weight to Walter White, he said.

The prequel is set in 2002, Gilligan said. He finds it difficult to believe, but “it is now a period piece,” he said. “We like non-linear storytelling, we like jumping around in time.” Assume anything that “Breaking Bad” did is possible for “Saul’s” storytelling technique.

“There’s a lot of focus on cause and effect,” Gould said. Individual stand-alone episode are not out of the question, but “we seem to be following a rhythm where it locks together.”

“I love the expression “Swiss watch,” I hope it will rise to that level,” Gilligan said. “We’re doing mass conjuring, all the writers, trying to imagine every nuance. It’s a hell of a lot of work, but I don’t know how to do it any other way.”

This is Gyllenhaal’s first TV series. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the personal battle of a woman dealing with the psychological ramifications of being in a political conflict, form the basis for the story by Hugo Blick.

“She starts to crack up,” she summarizes.

The current Middle East situation makes the story topical — and controversial. “When I wrote the piece 18 months ago it was a quiet time,” Blick said. “It is cyclical. It has now tragically become this hot spot yet again. No one could have predicted. It still remains an intractable problem.” When two warring sides are screaming at each other across the table, he said, underneath the table we’re reaching our hands across all the time. “When these conflicts are happening, the idea of reconciliation should never leave the table.”

The miniseries doesn’t posit a solution. “It asks the person who’s asking to think about what they think is right and what is wrong,” Gyllenhaal said.

To viewers who have had political objections to the story so far (it has already started in England), Blick says, “it’s really important to see the whole thing.”

On a lighter note, co-star Janet McTeer (“Albert Nobbs”) said Gyllenhaal’s British accent was perfect.

“The Divide” legal drama was originally sold to AMC, said creator-executive producer-director Tony Goldwyn (“Scandal”), then bumped to the sister channel WeTV in order to build that network (in the same way “Mad Men” put AMC on the map, they hope). “The Divide” premieres July 16 on WeTV.

Questions about the death penalty, class and race relations form the backdrop. Like a flood of current and upcoming cable series, it’s very dark.

AMC wisely said no to the first version, “then yes to having us reinvent it with an eight-episode arc,” said creator-executive producer-writer Richard LaGravenese. A murder case gets the story going, then it’s open to additional seasons, he said.

Marin Ireland (“Side Effects”), who plays Christine Rosa, a caseworker with the Innocence Initiative, said to prepare for the role she spent time at the actual Innocence Project.

The story is an amalgam of actual cases, Goldwyn said, set in Philadelphia, shot in Canada. The ripple effect on lawyers, politicians, the convicted and their families, provides “a provocative milieu for doing a television series.”

Clarke Peters (“The Wire”) said as an actor he’d rather not know the ending ahead of time, “like life.”

“The Chair,” a reality competition series about filmmaking, with two first-time directors making a movie from the same script and viewers eventually voting about which of two contenders made the better movie, is a novel experiment.

It looks like a not quite polished effort. Say, mid-way between a YouTube clip and a reality show on a premium cable channel. The question is, how to get from successful amateur to professional filmmaker? “The Chair” premieres Sept. 6 on Starz.

Chris Moore (“Project Greenlight”) created the series, pitting first-time directors Shane Dawson, a comedian with a YouTube presence, and Anna Martemucci, a writer and actress, against each other. Zachary Quinto (“Heroes”) serves as the would-be directors’ mentor (he aims to direct someday). The two shot from the same script and ended up with very different products.

Shot over four weeks in Pittsburgh, the budget was roughly $600,000 per director. The films will get a limited theatrical release when the TV series runs.

“You guys are experiencing the first time Shane and Anna have met each other,” Moore said, as a cameraman recorded the Starz press conference for possible inclusion in the series. It’s not enough to make a good movie, Moore said. You also have to think about marketing, budget and more. The barriers to entry are higher.

Both directors said the $250,000 prize offered by “The Chair” is almost beside the point, next to the value of the directing experience.

Kilts! Horses! Romance! Sci-fi! Here comes a sexy bit of time travel. Adapted from the Diana Gabaldon book series, “Outlander” will get an early premiere on Starz Aug. 2 on various platforms, in advance of the network premiere Aug. 9. This mixed-genre series is getting a heavy push, not least because it has a built-in fan base.

The premise: Claire Randall, a combat nurse from 1945, is somehow swept back to 1743 where she finds herself in a forest full of Redcoats. Judging by the first hour, fans of the books will devour the TV version.

Caitrona Balfe is a tad fragile-looking as Claire; Tobias Menzies is well cast as her husband Frank Randall. Sam Heughan is perfectly gruff as the Scottish warrior who comes to Claire’s rescue.

“Televison is a unique form in terms of storytelling. In terms of serialized drama, having source material for these dense, complicated dramas, it’s great way of world-building. This could only be a TV series,” as opposed to a movie, said Starz boss Chris Albrecht.

The 16-episode first season is shooting on location in Scotland. It will be scheduled as a split season: The first eight episodes will air over eight consecutive Saturdays through September 27 with the second half in early 2015.

Here’s where niche cable networks are going: it’s not all about cheap reality shows that have no souls. Sometimes, the cheap reality shows have a larger vision. Green, eco-friendly, save the world programming on Pivot, a network geared to Millennials, is tackling “upcycling.”

“Garbage is my passion,” says one of the workers at Terracycle, the company at the heart of “Human Resources.” The series premieres Aug. 8 on Pivot.

“Human Resources,” billed as a docu-comedy, won’t draw huge ratings, but it does give hope for the future of the planet with its determinedly ecologically sound point of view.

Separating the non-recyclables (dirty diapers) from the rest, then remaking trash into new products (clothes made from old t-shirts, jewelry from found metal), and next, finding ways to actually recycle diapers/hygiene products and discarded cigarettes, Terracycle considers itself a “social business.” They intentionally hold profits to 1 percent of revenues and plow the rest back into research and development, said Founder and CEO Tom Szaky. They’re now in 26 countries, they “upcycled” 110 million lbs of nonrecyclable waste this year.

The show is self-serving for Terracycle, but it’s made in an entertaining way. The company’s goal is “to eliminate the concept of garbage.” More to the point, the aim to “take the garbage out of TV.”

Grotesque, terrifying and deeply disturbing — and those were just the parts of the first hour of “The Strain,” glimpsed through fingers shielding eyes. A good old-fashioned horror tale accented with high-tech vampiricism, “The Strain” is nothing if not an effective fright-fest.

In an age of viral contagion, via social media and otherwise, nothing is more unnerving than the thought of a plane full of infected, dead passengers arriving on our shores and a virulent mystery organism set loose in Manhattan.

The project from director Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy) and based on the trilogy of novels he co-authored, has a sprawling cast, unsettling musical score and basic horror instincts adapted to a modern tale. Billed as a “high-concept thriller,” it’s really just a scary, scary story about our modern fears of everything we cannot see. Plus regenerating not-so-dead folks.

Corey Stoll (The Bourne Legacy) plays Dr. Ephraim Goodweather, head of the Centers for Disease Control, who is on the case. His team figure out the virus is related to an ancient strain closely associated with vampiricism. And the future of humanity is at stake!

Well told, well acted. “The Strain” might be just the thing for fans of “The Walking Dead” feeling a little too calm this summer.

Joanne Ostrow has been watching TV since before "reality" required quotation marks. "Hill Street Blues" was life-changing. If Dickens, Twain or Agatha Christie were alive today, they'd be writing for television. And proud of it.